Time Essay: The World's Double Standard

To Americans, the world's judgment seems to be rigged up to a perverse
double standard. Let only a rumor waft through, a propagandist's
mischievous fantasy about the CIA's organizing the attack on the Sacred
Mosque at Mecca, and rioters swarm like film extras against U.S.
consulates from Turkey to India; in Islamabad, Pakistan, two Americans
die and the embassy goes up in flames. Let the U.S. admit the deposed
Shah for temporary medical treatment, and the Tehran embassy, with all
occupants, becomes the property of overheated Shi'ite gunmen. But let
four Soviet divisions...